


reality is like a cupcake

by ezekiels



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Baking, F/F, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezekiels/pseuds/ezekiels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Audrey misses her session with Claire because she is busy stress baking cupcakes and Claire stops by to see what’s wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reality is like a cupcake

**Author's Note:**

> AU in which Claire and Tommy weren’t skin-jacked because that shit just rubbed me the wrong way.

Cupcakes are Audrey’s speciality. She loves to sit back with a glass of wine and watch them rise. She loves painting them with icing the way an excited child puts tinsel on a Christmas tree.

The only problem now is that she isn’t sure whether _she_ truly loves it. After all, what if it’s just some left over part of the real Audrey Parker’s personality or Lucy’s or Sarah’s or whoever she was before that, if she was someone else before that?

She sighs and takes a big gulp of wine. If she keeps thinking like this, she’s going to go crazy.

She’s getting together icing sugar and colouring when there’s a knock at the door. She glances over, expecting Duke (he’s become rather fond of her cupcakes), but instead sees Claire. She smiles at her through the glass, all red hair and blue eyes and pantsuit. Beautiful.

Audrey really has to stop thinking that dangerous word whenever she’s looks at Claire.

“It’s unlocked!” Audrey calls.

Claire steps inside and, with a sureness that Audrey envies, crosses the room to her. “You missed our session today.”

“Sorry about that. I got a little distract by, uh, cupcakes.” She laughs and pushes her hair out of her eyes, streaking her temple with cupcake mix. She’s never been the tidiest cook. Well, the real Audrey Parker never has.

She really should call Audrey sometime soon. It’s really been too long. She’s married now.

She wonders if Lucy or Sarah were ever married. 

She shakes the thought from her mind and reaches for a glass bowl. The cupcakes smell as if they’re a few minutes away from being done. Time to make the icing.

“You stress bake,” Claire observes from across the counter. 

Audrey laughs at that. “What gave it away?”

“The ‘Cupcakes for $1’ sign downstairs.”

She smiles, shaking her head. Typical Duke. She’s going to miss him when she goes away.

Her phone rings and she pulls it from her pants pocket. “Got something for me, Tommy?” she asks, shouldering the phone against her ear as she crosses to turn the jug on.

“I’ve got a lot of ‘Hell, no.’ What’s the going rate for that?”

Audrey smiles, mouthing “Tommy” as way of explanation to Claire, and turns her attention back to the counter to grab another glass bowl. There’s a light muffled patter of conversation on the other end of the phone: Nathan and Dwight. Something must be happening.

She’s glad it’s her day off.

Nathan and Dwight’s voices fade away. “Audrey, I don’t know how you put up with this guy. He’s driving me crazy.”

“Are we talking about Nathan or Dwight here?” Blue and pink cupcakes, she decides.

“Both!”

Audrey laughs. “They’re not that bad.”

“Excuse you?”

Smiling, Audrey shakes her head and, behind her, the jug comes to the boil. Hands full with searching for the pink colouring and ears full of Tommy’s complaints, she doesn’t have time get it.

She looks to Claire for help, asking with a smile and a flick of her eyes towards the jug. Claire smiles and obliges without argument.

“And another thing!” Tommy continues. “If I have to sit through another of Nathan’s ‘I-love-Audrey-so-much-bo-ho’ speeches, I’m gonna kill him. Do you think Duke will help me dispose of the body? I think he’ll help me dispose of the body.”

“Vince and Dave might help.”

“Nah, me and the brothers aren’t exactly not speaking terms since I blackmailed them.”

“Funny how blackmail does that to friendships.”

“Blackmailers get what blackmailers do.”

Audrey steps aside, putting a hand over the mouthpiece to tell Claire how much hot water is needed. Claire rolls her eyes at the instructions and bumps her hip playfully against Audrey’s. “I mightn’t have past lives like you, Audrey Parker, but I know a thing or two about icing.”

“Hey, is that Claire?” Tommy asks. “Tell her I say ‘Hi.’”

“Tommy says ‘Hi.’”

“Tell him I said ‘Hi’ back.”

“You heard that, Tommy?”

“Loud and clear.” There’s the sound of a door opening and closing. “Well, anyway, sugar-plum, I better get going,” he says cheerfully, which Audrey doesn’t have to ask to know means Nathan has returned.

“Good luck.”

Tommy hangs up and she tucks her phone back into her pocket. She notices with a smile that Claire is mixing the icing. Behind her, the timer goes off.

Grabbing oven mittens, she takes out the tray and sets it on the counter. The sweet smell of sugar wafts off them. She turns off the oven and reaches for the blue icing bowl.

Claire pulls the bowl out of reach. “I thought it was cupcake edict to wait until they’re cool before you start to put icing on them.”

“They’re cupcakes, not art.”

“Why are you stress baking?”

Audrey gives up on the blue bowl and takes the pink one. “Just the usual reasons,” she says, hugging the pink bowl to her side as she works the cupcakes from their tray and onto a waiting plate. “My identity, my coming disappearance…” _My increasingly intense feelings for you_. Pushing the now empty tray aside, she pulls the plate of cupcakes closer and starts to paint icing onto them with her finger.

Claire laughs. “You finger-paint on the icing?”

“Only way to ensure perfection.”

Claire falls silent as she watches her and Audrey puts her whole mind into icing the cupcakes. Her FBI training has always served her well in moments like this.

It’s funny how her stolen memories feel so real.

Audrey doesn’t know why but the thought stops her in her tracks. The icing dribbles down her finger and inches its way towards her wrist. She watches it silently, looking at her hand as if it’s not a part of her.

In a few weeks, she won’t be Audrey Parker any more. She’ll disappear and then, twenty-seven years later, she’ll be back. She’ll be someone else. The person she is now will be dead.

Claire grasps her arm. “You’re right here, Audrey,” she says, as if she reminds people of their reality on a daily basis. For all Audrey knows, she does. She’s never bothered to ask. “You’re right here with me.”

“I don’t feel real,” Audrey confesses in a daze.

Claire’s hand tightens on her arm. “You’re real.”

Her words are no comfort. What Audrey feels is soul deep, in a place that words can’t touch, but she wants to be comforted, she wants to believe. She just wants to feel real like everyone else.

She turns to Claire and kisses her. She captures the surprised sound she makes with her mouth and presses her back against the counter, pinning her there with the weight of her body. It’s not until she’s trapped there, Audrey’s icing covered fingers in her red hair, that she very tentatively kisses Audrey back.

The kiss is like a lifeline in a storm. Audrey holds onto it with unrestrained need and Claire responds with gentle lips and gentler hands. They cradle and coax as if she’s dealing with porcelain and it’s the care she takes that reassures Audrey in the end.

She’s real. She’s here. _She’s real_.

Her lips grow gentle and her hands soften into cradling. She begins to kiss Claire for the pure pleasure of kissing her, answering lips instead of forcing them.

The room is growing dark with sunset when the kiss breaks with a laugh from Claire. “Ow, ow, ow. Audrey, my back, ow.”

She laughs, pulling Claire away from the counter to curiously tug up the back of her shirt to see the indentations the counter left behind. Claire swats at her hand, her face flushed with more than just embarrassment, and Audrey takes the opportunity to capture all of Claire in her arms. Their noses touch and their breath mingles, lips growing closer…

Claire turns the blue bowl upside down on Audrey’s head.

They both start laughing but it soon turns to kissing. The bowl gets set aside and the icing forgotten as their hands take to exploring skin with closed eyes. Eventually, they break the kiss to the cross the room and that is when, at last, their bodies find purchase Audrey’s bed.

It’s too fast, too soon, but it’s real.

For now, in this moment, that’s all Audrey needs.


End file.
